


you were spitting venom

by oceansinmychest



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, One Shot, Post-Break Up, Season/Series 04, petty ex-girlfriends as i'd like to call it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 05:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15924056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: So, the Governor's come to gloat. With petty revenge, she whispers a curse: "I never visited you."





	you were spitting venom

**Author's Note:**

> It's debatable as to whether or not Vera actually visited Joan in the ward (though I prefer to believe that she did). Just wanted to write this nasty 'what if' scenario in which she doesn't and throws it in Joan's face while becoming embittered Vinegar Tits.
> 
> This is just a blending of some S4 scenes with my own interpretation.
> 
> Title inspired by Modest Mouse's "Spitting Venom."

 

> “I lived alone, my collapsing room of continual night.”
> 
> _iii._ – Joshua Weiner

The crooked path of corruption ushers Vera farther from the light and wistful hope. Swallowing her sorrows, hardening her heart, Governor Bennett visits the viper in the detainment unit. Solitude suits Joan, she decides.   

“Leave us,” she tells the guard on patrol.

Officer Murphy slinks off for a smoke break. A pail awaits its deposit of ash. She needs the fresh air (re: nicotine fix) as much as she needs the steady, reliable pay.

The _inmate_ has the audacity to _request_ to speak with Governor Bennett. Already, it rubs her raw. Wentworth cannot house them both.

Distancing herself, Ferguson stares past the newly fledged Governor. Her razor stare catches the crowns that rightfully belong to her. Fingers curl, her knuckles bleached white, bone strained against paper skin that’s steeled over the decades. Devoid of the uniform, she seems less imposing.  She hasn’t quite gone feral. Far from rabid, Ferguson only exhibits a thirst for order’s return.

Miss Bennett’s stance has become more rigid, authoritarian, in the pants. In a battle of wills, she’s come to behead Medusa herself. Without the aid of Perseus. Vera wants to cut this toxic chord away from her once malleable body. She folds her hands, the transparent glass acting as a divide.

Ghost-white, it appears that Joan Ferguson could simply fade away. Inconsolable in the heinous yellow light, the fire didn’t leave her unscathed. The scars are barely visible, a pinkish tint spanning across her body, hidden beneath her civis.

The hurt never lessens.

As graceful as a fallen angel, she steps onto hallowed ground. The inky veil shrouds her sneer. Malevolent shadows cast horns instead of a halo. Distaste settles on the bed of her tongue. Electra’s passion for revenge resonates.

“ _Come_ to gloat?” Spills from her mouth slicker than oil.

“You wanted to see me?” Vera inquires. She has a prison to run.

“Not particularly, no.”

She clicks her syllables, grinds her teeth, despite how her hands rest in front of her waist. The viper lays in wait. A dark brooding stare focuses on the hair pulled back, taut against the scalp, the braided bun that Vera learned how to perfect courtesy of her predecessor. Desire and rage spin in a centrifuge stored after every encounter. Joan does not take treason _lightly_.

They skirt around the topic of Channing.

Comically, Vera raises her brows. She mirrors smug confidence, bemused by the scenario.

“You’re a prisoner now. You don’t get to make meetings with the regional director.”

Eminent displeasure begins with the twitch of a cheek.

In the grime and the glow, they appear sickly. Everything sours.

“Really?”

She challenges, not one to back down from her opponent. A reckoning lies in wait. Joan doesn’t rattle her warning. Her calculated revenge hides in the dark.

Thorny and resilient, Vera wears a toughened skin. She has learned to mimic her predecessor, stitching herself together with leather and thread. She mentions a name too _sacred_ to fall from her lips.

"What would Jianna think of you now?"

Her eyes fall to the ground, to the glass divide. She imagines her hands upon that scrawny throat as opposed to a needle. To have and to hold, to pin her for the bland, persistent moth she is.

For all the lessons that have been taught, Vera retaliates with the venom that’s been given to her. Hate rises up her throat and fills her mouth. Whether she means it or not matters little. 

Abandoned by the pupil who once revered her, Joan nearly spits out a laugh, but she needn’t give Vera that privilege. The sickly sweetened stench of sweat causes her to curl her lip. Vera stands as evidence that Mother Misery has birthed something. Strayed from innocence, dirty inside and out, her unclean presence perturbs Joan. This isn’t some exploited shitkicker. Oh, no. This is Vinegar Tits in the flesh.

“I did some checking up—” She continues, near monotonous in her report.

She never could mind her own business. Ever the rodent, she preferred sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.

“So, you’ve read a portion of my story much like Mr. Fletcher’s journal.”

Spoken with a sneer, her hair tumbles down wild and free, unrestricted in the way her black cardigan flows. An insidious storm brews from within.

Disenchanted, consumed by her pain, Governor Bennett has heard enough. Coiled, she strikes. She severs the last, remaining tie. Nothing about her declaration preaches innocence. Polished and sharpened into the enemy, misery spreads its pestilence.

“I _never_ visited you.”

The statement stands alone. Damage inflicted burns the bridge that kept them together. Power brings pain, the title a curse, that corrodes and rots them from the inside out. The career united them just as it severed all ties. Now, what?

“In the hospital,” she clarifies in her obvious manner of speech.

So, detached, she carves her own granite path. She rectifies her phrasing with a switchblade defense.

That vile, little Judas **spills** poison into her ear.

With a lunge, her palm strikes the glass. This contributes to the art of becoming unhinged. Sworn off like Novocain, she had cared for Vera in her own difficult way. Nothing remains. Hatred is a song to be orchestrated with cool, derisive fingers. She maestros not one fate, but many. A clever combatant always wins.

 _Thud_.

The sound matches the Governor’s roaring adrenaline. Her stomach leaps, her pulse screaming. She recoils, grey eyes large before hardening into diamonds once more. All vinegar, Miss Bennett deserved the aptly-fitting title.

“You will rue this day, Vera,” she hisses, spreads pain and malevolence. “You are a weak, worthless peon who finds herself trapped in the shadow of another. You meant nothing to me; your body was a tool at my disposal.”

Long, slender fingers fan out. Her palm slithers down. Leaves smudges in the aftermath. Streak, streak, squeak.

Vera flicks her wrist and anoints that pale, pressed palm with a tap. She baits the beast, conjuring the sway she had during their ruined dinner.

Tension screws the Governor’s jaw shut. In silent rebellion, she glowers. Turns on heel.

“You’re going to rot here, Joan; I advise you make yourself comfortable.”

Joan remains a mountain, a volcano before the inevitable explosion, as she watches Vera small form disappear down the corridor, left alone in her solitude.

A thick glass heart still breaks.

By day, Vera buries herself in Jake’s romantic ruse. She finds herself distracted by one who seemingly dotes on her entire being, but it’s always wrong. She imagines - remembers - someone else. Akin to residue, Joan has a penchant for haunting.

By night, she goes home alone.

She dwells on what's been said and done.

Opening the freezer, Vera stares past her prepared dinners. She reaches for the small bottle of vodka, pours herself a shot, and throws it back before moving onto Pinot. The metamorphosis renders her a husk.

_What happened?_

Bitterness fills her to the core, still haunted by a shade of a woman she once knew.

**Author's Note:**

> Thought about writing this one in 2nd POV, but decided against it.
> 
> The "a thick glass heart still breaks" is intentionally ambiguous. You're meant to wonder whose it belongs to.


End file.
